Understanding The Mess In Honduras

For the past three months most of the world has marched in lock-step behind Manuel Zelaya's demand to be reinstated as the president of Honduras. Last week Zelaya returned surreptitiously to Tegucigalpa, where he is now using the Brazilian embassy as a base for rallying his supporters at home and abroad. The Honduran government has ruled that this must stop, and now, for the first time, serious domestic unrest is a real possibility.

But Zelaya's legal case for returning to the presidency--and the cases of those who support him around the world--is built on sand. This crisis was caused far more by intense international interference than by domestic conditions.

The fact is, there was no coup, as is demonstrated clearly in an August analysis by the non-partisan U.S. Congressional Research Service. After a month in the hands of U.S. legislators--most of whom, along with the White House and State Department, seem to have learned nothing from it--that report has finally been released to the public by Congressman Aaron Schock, R-Ill.

CRS Senior Foreign Law Specialist Norma Gutierrez shows that it was Zelaya who repeatedly broke Honduran laws and that his removal from office by the courts and legislature was constitutional--though his forced exile was not.

The international fiasco began immediately after Zelaya was removed from power on June 28. The Organization of American States, the obvious body to play a mediating role, became immediately unfit for the role. The Inter-American Democratic Charter mandates (repeatedly) that in a crisis the OAS must first undertake "diplomatic initiatives" and "good offices," but instead under the militant leadership of Jose Insulza it immediately declared that Zelaya was overthrown in a coup that violated the nation's Constitution, legal system and democratic practice. Within days that was followed by tough political and economic sanctions.

International unity is due mainly to three factors. Political fanaticism guides the actions of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who led and still celebrates a failed coup in 1992 and his followers. The actions of moderate governments, including the U.S., seem largely to be "playing along" with Chavista demands so they will seem as pro-democracy and anti-coup as the Chavistas pretend to be, and maybe even make the latter seem more moderate. The ignorant--doubtless including some "moderates"--know so little they just go PC and vote with the militant-led herd.

Zelaya's ouster was in two phases. As Gutierrez shows, the first phase consisted of the events leading to his removal from office, the key action in determining whether his removal was "unconstitutional." The second was his forced exile, which was both illegal and politically stupid because predictably it was used by Zelaya's supporters to argue dishonestly that everything that happened was a military coup.

After centuries of bitter experience, Latin Americans fear civilian leaders who take and hold power indefinitely. To guard against this, all Latin constitutions long outlawed immediate re-election while most outlawed re-election altogether. Times changed. Today the use of re-election to enforce a calculated drift toward populist authoritarianism is most obvious in Chavista countries, but during the past two decades governments of the center and right have also amended their constitutions to allow re-election.

Honduras had emphatically resisted this tendency until Zelaya, who is feared by many Hondurans because of his Chavista tendencies. Zelaya pressed for a reappraisal of the prohibition, which the Constitution strictly prohibits. His persistent illegal actions, for months pointed out by the courts, led legally designated court officials to find him guilty of treason, abuse of authority, usurpation of functions and acting against the established form of government. On June 26 constitutionally authorized arrest and raid warrants were issued and he was physically removed two days later.

If the Honduran Constitution was good enough to allow the country to be a member of the OAS in the first place, even with its strict prohibition of multiple presidential terms, then it can not be un-constitutional for the courts and legislature to enforce it according to what it stipulates. OAS and world "diplomats" can't have it both ways, professing their unshakeable dedication to constitutions and the rule of law even as they make a hero of a country's No. 1 lawbreaker and press sanctions on a government that enforces its own Constitution as its legal leaders decide, irrespective of whether foreigners approve.

Thus, the only "coup" related to recent Honduran events has been the successful Chavista manipulation of the Honduran military's obtuseness--forcibly exiling Zelaya--to characterize Zelaya's removal from office as a coup, even a military coup. Latin nations with centuries of experience with military governments evidently feel that they can not seem indifferent to anything with the superficial appearance of a military coup, whether it is or not.

The irony and tragedy for Latin democracies is that the Hondurans have shown it is possible to remove a leader with Chavista aspirations by legal, democratic means. But the Latin fear of setting a precedent by approving any apparent "coup" has enabled the Chavistas--shouting "democracy" and "rule of law"--to cynically fool or intimidate the world. Support for this lie by moderates sets the stage for future political manipulations that will directly affect some of their countries. The chickens will come home to roost.

But what to do now? Realistically, so many governments are so committed to this posture that no abrupt change will come even if leaders finally admit to themselves the perilous precedent they are setting, and there is no evidence that they will. Even the Obama administration is not likely to openly revise its position regarding Zelaya's legitimacy, though so far it has at least refrained from calling the action a military coup and has sought a negotiated settlement far more seriously than the OAS, if largely on Zelaya's terms.

The best route now would be one of moderation necessitating compromises on both sides in Honduras for the good of the country, irrespective of inevitable ongoing Chavista-led fanaticism abroad. Both sides must commit to support the winner of the already scheduled Nov. 29 presidential election.

The moderate approach might allow Zelaya to return to office momentarily, to be replaced then by an interim government, while simultaneously requiring all parties to recognize that Zelaya and those responsible for his exile abroad violated the Constitution and one hour after the agreement is signed will be removed from government or military office. There would be a general amnesty for all who abide by peaceful democratic norms.

In their own as well as Honduran interests, this is the hour for moderate American nations to take back control of the OAS from the radicals and to accept any resolution that is made by Hondurans for Hondurans. Whether a Honduran agreement is achieved or not, the OAS should recognize the results of the November election. The U.S. should do so even if other OAS countries do not, and the OAS should return to its original guidelines of noninterference in the affairs of member countries.

The bottom line question is whether the truth, the rule of law, democracy and national sovereignty really mean anything or whether those are just the slogans and manipulative tools of self-aggrandizing politicians and analysts.

William Ratliff is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and at the Independent Institute.